


Pain Relief

by Evie_adams273



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Deep dive, Emotions, Gen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Scorpius Alone, Self Harm, Third year?, aftermath of self harm, at night, exploration into personal feelings, for me not you, i'm serious don't read this if self harm is a trigger for you, massive trigger warning, minor disassociation, technically angst but i don't want to just call it that, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:06:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26717968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evie_adams273/pseuds/Evie_adams273
Summary: Trigger Warning - Self HarmScorpius has a bad night. This is the aftermath.
Kudos: 10





	Pain Relief

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how to make this much clearer.
> 
> Trigger warning for explicit discussion of self harm.
> 
> Implications of disassociation.
> 
> I cannot stress this enough.

Scorpius eyed the marks with a sort of detachment. The habits were strong enough that no longer felt direct pain when he looked at them. No shame or anger or self-hatred. Just an acceptance of what he’d done and what he should do now.

In a few days, he would look back at it and feel nothing more than a need for secrecy. Not because he disliked it – he didn’t feel anything at all towards it – but because he did not want to upset anyone else.

He didn’t need to feel anything towards it. He knew what he had done. He knew why he had done it. He had never understood why it helped, but if he didn’t feel anything upon looking at it, he didn’t need to force an emotion through his head. That only gave him another thing to repress when the morning came.

This ritual was arguably a stupid thing to do. Sometimes it made it worse because it brought the pain back to the surface and it probably didn’t even help healing. But it offered some closure on each incident. An ending, a moment of finality that said he was done for that moment in time. A sense of calm that would allow him to climb into bed and drift into a restless sleep.

This part was the only bit that made sense. He didn’t know why doing this helped. He didn’t know why he had started it. He didn’t know what had pushed him to hurting in this way. But when the adrenaline built to uncontrollable levels, when he needed to scream and hit things and feel _something_ , he lost the ability to repress those outbursts.

No one wanted him stumbling around the dormitory at ungodly hours, slamming himself into walls punching the wooden beds, so he did this instead. He quietened the storm in a way that calmed him and kept the rest of the world happy.

He knew about the other ways you were supposed to be able to keep yourself calm with. Painting or drawing on yourself. Writing it down. Ripping things up. None of that helped anymore. Why would it when the bit he focussed on was the pain itself.

The pain grounded him and centred him and gave him something to focus on for long enough for his body to reset a little. He could reset and carry on with life as if nothing had happened. So no one found out. Not his dad. Not even Albus. And Albus never would find out.

Scorpius slipped his hand out the hangings and pulled open his top drawer with a small smile. He took a out a small tube of cream and a sleeve he had sewn for himself at the end of summer, withdrawing behind the curtains again and picking up his wand. He muttered Lumos to himself, sticking his wand between his teeth as he unscrewed the cap of the cream.

He squeezed a little of it onto his finger, dropping the tube to catch the falling excess and slather the stuff over his arm. He winced as the cuts started to sting again, biting his lip to stop himself crying out. It would only take him a few seconds to settle into it, and then he could close his eyes and breathe again.

Scorpius finished with the cream, pulling the sleeve over his hand and up his arm until it put pressure all the way up the cuts. The pain had now faded into something that didn’t really hurt anymore. At least, not in the typical way you would describe pain.

In that, Scorpius could tell it caused him hurt. He knew he would describe the sensation as a painful one, but he didn’t feel any discomfort. He had landed, once again, in the limbo between pain and a lack thereof. The knowledge that a certain reaction would be typical here, to the point where his lack of reaction would worry someone, yet he didn’t feel anything. The pain existed, but it didn’t hurt. Now that the immediate sting had stopped, it was over.

Until next time. Because there would be a next time. The scratches would heal, the marks would almost be faded, and then it would happen all over again. Whether it was this week or next week or in a month, it would happen again, because the pain wouldn’t be stopping anytime soon. There was no way bring his mum back. There was no way to fix the disconnect between him and his dad. There was no way that anyone else would really understand the pain he felt. So the scratches would continue with no end in sight. Maybe one day, he would reach a state of healing, but he doubted that would occur without an intervention he didn’t know how to stage.

Anyone who asked would have said this started after the summer. Or towards the end of it. But no one would really know he’d built up to it for too long. It had been a consideration, an urge, for months before anything had happened. He’d repressed it. He’d used alternatives. But during that one night where he had given up, it had helped so much more. The only night where he had ever held shame for his actions. Shame in the knowledge that, had he tried, he might have been able to hold himself back from it and do something else. But he hadn’t. He’d given in to it because it had seemed like a quick way out. A way to get it over with and end it so that he could sleep.

That first time had been the only time he had cried because of it. He didn’t need to cry anymore. It had become a ritual. The urge. The act. The aftermath.

An unhealthy vicious cycle reserved for the middle of the night because he wasn’t stupid enough to take the tool into lessons. He had once. He’d abandoned it after one lesson, safe in the knowledge that he had another in the dormitory for when he next needed it.

A cycle that just involved losing the same battle over and over because, really, he was fighting for the other side at this point.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who read this, please be mindful if you want to comment on whether this is an 'accurate' portrayal of self harm. This is my experience and that makes it accurate to me and that's what this was about. Comments will be moderated.
> 
> Thanks for reading. If you did.  
> Twitter: @evie_adams273
> 
> Black Lives Matter  
> Fuck TERFs  
> Fuck people who claim that abuse in response to bigotry is the same as transphobia.


End file.
